Jezebel has some trouble understanding Camille Paglia. Let’s help them out.

Camille Paglia has a written a new piece for Time Magazine, called It’s a Man’s World and it Always Will Be. Camille has the audacity to point out that if men are “obsolete”, then women will soon be extinct.

Oh dear.  Cue the shrieking harridans over at Jezebel.  They demand to know just what Camille means by that! How could that be possible? The increasingly clueless and defiantly obtuse Erin Gloria Ryan has some questions for Dr. Paglia.

Let’s help her answer those, shall we?

 A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism [Citation needed].

http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/the-end-of-men

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/308135/

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Are-Not-Cost-Effective-America/dp/0941138119

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1339991-are-men-necessary-when-sexes-collide

Men’s faults, failings and foibles [Like? Aggression? War? Rape? Dick-waving? The Jackass franchise? What?] have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment [By whom?].

By whom?  Are you kidding me?  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!

How about by Jezebel?

Men are rapists (especially MRA men)!

Assholes who don’t know how to clean but can be trained like dogs to do so by the truly dedicated!

Boys are gross!

Jezebel hates men!

The end of white men!

Fathers are not really that important after all!

blah blah blah blah …. Basically the entire site is devoted to pointing out any flaws the ladies can find in men, all the while ignoring the fact they would have no power, clean water, communications or computer technology and would essentially be screaming messages back and forth between grass huts without men, a point Camille has made in the past.

Ideologue professors [Who?] at our leading universities [Which ones?] indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates [How? Are you implying that young people internalize ideologies simply by hearing them once? How is this indoctrination occurring] with carelessly fact-free [Odd hyperbole] theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology [Bold statement. Source?].

This is almost too laughably ridiculous to warrant a response.  Has Erin never heard of the women’s studies department?  Almost every liberal arts oriented university has one, stuffed full of professors that do not study women, they study “feminism”, which is not the same thing.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other ‘studies’ was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these ‘studies’ are about propaganda rather than serious education.

Thomas Sowell 

People internalize ideologies by hearing them once?  What? Show me the university degree that can be earned after one class.  Impressionable undergraduates are typically enrolled for four years.  Four years is more than sufficient for complete indoctrination.

If you want carelessly fact-free, just consider your questions at the beginning of the paragraph.  Who? Which ones?  Are you seriously patting yourself on the back for your epic take down of Camille? Really?  That’s what Camille means by “fact-free”, toots.

And now you are denying that feminism considers gender a fiction with no basis in biology?  Really?  Here we go with the “fact-free” again.  Google “gender as a social construct” and tell me what you get.  Seriously.  Go do it.  It’s not a bold claim at all.  It’s pedestrian at this point.  Feminism claims that gender is a social fiction with no basis in biology.

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.

Judith Butler

Is it any wonder that so many [How many?] high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success [Cite examples here, otherwise it just sounds like you’re talking out of your ass], find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety [See previous note about ass-talking] about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life [See two previous notes about the origin of talking w/r/t Your Ass]?

Here we go with all the stupid facts again.  The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports that approximately 40 million people aged 18 and over suffer from anxiety issues, which is the most common mental illness in the US, and women are twice as likely to be affected as men.

Happy talk about women succeeding academically? Oh you missed this article?  And this one?  And this one, too? They’re all from Jezebel, you moron.

When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood [Clarification needed here to explain what your argument even is. What is manhood? What is masculinity? A John Wayne movie? Like, Iroquois manhood? Mustaches? Fatherhood? Dressing in plaid shirts? Dying of prostate cancer? Can the men be gay? Can the men be peaceful? You’re assuming your audience understands dog whistle shorthand that only exists in your brain.] then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments.

Well color me fucking SHOCKED that Jezebel has no idea what masculinity or manhood means.  Here’s a starter course for you.

From my long observation [Anecdata], which predates the sexual revolution [Cut this; reminding readers that you formed your opinion before hippie-times doesn’t add to your cred; it makes you seem doddering], this remains a serious problem afflicting Anglo-American society, with its Puritan residue [Sounds like a euphemism for dried ejaculate; cut].

Anecdata?  Dr. Paglia has been teaching at universities since 1972.  Her book Sexual Personae topped the bestseller lists in 1990, a rare accomplishment for a scholarly book.  She has been active in universities as an educator for over 40 years. That’s hardly “anecdata”.

“Doddering”? Charming.  I’m surprised Erin didn’t pull out the fat and ugly arguments to go along with “old”.  All praise the sisterhood, huh?  What was that about critiquing other women on their thoughts and ideas again?  No?  Just call her old and be done with it?

How clever.

“Ejaculate”?  That icky boy stuff?  Ew, gross.

How mature.

In France, Italy, Spain, Latin America, and Brazil, in contrast, many ambitious professional women [How many?] seem [Ugh] to have found a formula for asserting power [Statistics? Something? Back this up please? Careful with the “Latin America, sexy feminist wonderland” stereotype; easily disprovable, or at least vehemently argued against. Also kind of in line with troublesome “sexy brown chick” trope you keep going back to; careful here] and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamor [Oy.]. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences [Girl what are you even talking about here? Get some new cultural references].

Want facts?  Probably not, but here are some anyways.  This report might help.

Quantitative research was conducted in France, Germany, US, UK, Brazil, Mexico and China.  Qualitative research was conducted in France, Germany, US, UK, Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia.

Nearly 70% of women globally think that being beautiful helps them get what they want out of life, and the same number believe that the relationship between happiness and beauty is directly proportional. 93% of women said they felt more confident overall when they knew they looked beautiful.

Careful now.  This may not be racist at all.  Rather inclusive if you ask me.  That’s kind of foreign to feminists, though, isn’t it?

After the next inevitable apocalypse [Okay. That is your argument. Men aren’t over because the world is ending. Okay. Okay. Got it.], men will be desperately needed again [Again, not sure you established that men aren’t needed now…]!

Not sure you established that men aren’t needed now.

Wow.

That needs to “established”, does it?  Okay, here you go.  All information taken from the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock [Who is this piece about? Women who have children without men around? Childless young women with academic accomplishments? Why is the subject of this piece constantly morphing?], but most women and children will be expecting men [Citation needed] to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf [Just to review: we’re now arguing that gender roles must exist because after a theoretical apocalypse, women and children will “expect” men to fend for them? That’s what’s happening here? Okay.].

Most women want breadwinner husbands?  Uh, yes.  Yes they do.

‘Women with young children are going back to the very traditional division of labour in which they want the husband as the breadwinner.

‘Having tried full-time working themselves they have found the home much more interesting and want to be enabled to have that.”

Stupid facts, again!

Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists [Citation needed], who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible [Who hurt you, Camille?].

Citation needed?  Go back to the top.  Men are obsolete.  The end of men.  Are men necessary?

 It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments [Who is this argument against?].

It’s not an argument against anything.  It’s pointing out the reality.  Facts.  I know, Erin, facts confuse you and make you feel all wobbly inside.  Don’t worry.  You can stick your head back in the sand very soon.

It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall [Ok.]. Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world [Don’t mention that you hang out in Philadelphia; undermines credibility].

Aw, no argument left? Just an insult against Philadelphia?

How very, very clever.

These stately colossi are loaded, steered, and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role—but women were not its author [They just made every man who ever existed inside of their bodies; nbd]. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

Hey, looky, looky.  We actually agree!  Women’s greatest contribution to society is to be a mother to children.

They made every man who ever existed.  Erin, you do realize that human reproduction requires that icky ejaculate you were grossing out over not so long ago, right?

Women:  they made every man

Men:  they made every man AND THE WHOLE FUCKING ECONOMY, TOO.

Credit?

It’s due.

Lots of love,

JB

Food = Love. Careful now. That’s a trap set by the patriarchy to encourage meaningful relationships, and we can’t have that!

 

 

Captain Capitalism has a theory that people whose political inclinations tend to lean left are less physically attractive than those who lean more to the right. According to the Captain, looking physically attractive takes work and effort and leftists have a strong tendency to look for someone else to blame for their problems, including having a huge ass and a muffin top that makes the People of Walmart look positively lithe.

 

I do NOT believe liberals and leftists are born uglier than their average conservative counterpart. It’s not like they’re genetically inferior or anything. What I am talking about is that they put A LOT LESS EFFORT into their physical appearance. Ergo, this is not a criticism of their basic, physical beauty, let alone their genetics, but it IS a criticism of their psychology. You could take that Prius-driving, 45 year old, gray haired, super skinny yoga woman who never wore make-up, never did her hair up, give her a make over and she’d come out looking just fine. Just as you could take the cowering, tubby orbiting beta with the Seth Rogen beard, through him in the gym for 3 months and have him come out looking just fine.

 

But that’s the not the point.

 

The point is to your average leftists such working out and maintenance requires effort. That AND the added risk they may still “fail” in attracting a mate. It is their pure hatred and fear of effort and competition that not only drives their political and economic ideologies, but also drives their “romantic” or “mating” ideology.

 

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.ca/2012/09/why-leftists-tend-to-be-uglier.html

 

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/photos/

 

I don’t want to discuss Cappy’s theory per se, other than to point out he cites some research that suggests he may be on to something, and that more feminine looking women tend to be Republicans. It’s colloquially known as the “Michele Bachmann” effect.

 

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103112001758

 

What I want to discuss is how an entire worldview can play out in various aspects of one’s personal life without necessarily any awareness on the part of the actor. Liberals may not realize that in blaming the “Man” for why they have a shitty job, they are also providing the justification for not hitting the gym, but the relationship exists nonetheless.

 

 

And I want to discuss that in the context of the woman who made 300 sandwiches for her boyfriend after she made him a sandwich and he told her she was on her way to earning an engagement ring, because to him, the act of making a sandwich was an act of love. And why else do you get engaged if not for love?

 

To him, sandwiches are like kisses or hugs. Or sex. “Sandwiches are love,” he says. “Especially when you make them. You can’t get a sandwich with love from the deli.”

 

http://nypost.com/2013/09/24/i-wooed-my-man-with-a-sandwich/

 

It’s actually pretty funny to see the feminist ladies at Slate’s Double XX blog and Jezebel try to understand how a woman, ANY woman, could possibly want to indicate her love for a man, and make that the basis of a potential marriage.

 

Who does that? Who shows a MAN they are loved and then thinks love is something that can sustain a marriage?

 

Amanda Hess is particularly hilarious trying to parse out the relationship between love and actions that demonstrate love.

 

How do we make sense of love in the time of “I’m 124 Sandwiches Away From an Engagement Ring”? The traditional romantic structures that previously organized our physical and emotional connections to other people are crumbling fast. Nobody buys one another root beer floats anymore. Everybody’s touching everybody else before they marry anyone. There are no boyfriends here. In the face of all this romantic disruption, some lovers are frantically constructing new frameworks—diamond-fishing sandwich blogs, for example—in a desperate attempt to reduce our strange and wonderful human experiences into another rote mechanical exercise. Stop. Love each other. Eat sandwiches. Don’t trade either of them for anything.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/09/25/just_300_sandwiches_for_an_engagement_ring_stephanie_smith_s_300_sandwiches.html

 

Don’t trade either of them for anything.

 

How can she not see that sandwiches and love are ONE AND THE SAME THING? Love is not just something you say. It’s something you do. Every day. For the rest of your life. For someone else. If you’re a heterosexual woman, that someone else is going to be a man.

 

 

And there’s the problem.

 

It doesn’t have to be a sandwich. It can be anything. Pizza. Cookies. Bread. A different handmade pasta every day for 300 days. Those things take skill, though. The beauty of a sandwich is that anyone can make one, regardless of their familiarity with the kitchen and the tools therein.

 

What it takes is a particular mindset. Your whole worldview needs to change to do something like make 300 sandwiches. You have to put the other person first, and take time out of your day, every day, to make a special effort to please another person. You think about their comfort and feelings and well-being and you put those things ahead of your own, not forever, not always, not in every single situation you will ever confront in your life together, BUT FOR THE TIME IT TAKES TO MAKE A SANDWICH.

 

 

What is that? Maybe 15 minutes? 15 minutes of your day, every day, is dedicated to the care of the person (man) you love.

 

And that’s just too much to trade, is it?

 

How sad. It’s not hard to imagine Amanda’s response, is it?

 

Well, what does he do for ME fifteen minutes a day? Get out the spreadsheets and start tabulating. 15 seconds to open the door for me. 45 seconds to go to the bedroom and fetch my purse because I have my boots on already and I forgot. 3 minutes to select an excellent Shiraz for our evening meal (South Africa! Try South Africa!). 8 minutes to run a hot bath and fill it with vanilla scented bubbles.

 

Keep careful tabs, and if he doesn’t hit the 15 minute absolute perfect trade-off mark, then fuck him and his sandwich. Chuck it in the trash. We’re after perfect equality, right? And the best way to achieve that is to be a temporal bean-counting bitch.

 

 

Yeah, okay. Good luck with that.

 

Jezebel wonders just how piss-poor a sandwich can be offered. If you’re gonna make someone a sandwich that he interprets as a gesture of love, then you want to put the LEAST amount of effort into that as possible, right? And maybe even try to trade off for blow-jobs instead?

 

Even though we now know, collectively as a Lady Monolith, how to please men, collectively as a Man Monolith, a few loose ends were left untied in Smith’s piece. Namely: how complicated a sandwich are we talking here? Would Eric still light up Stephanie’s ring finger if she just half assed the last 124 sandwiches by making him a pile of peanut butter on folded bread monstrosities? What is the minimum number of ingredients required for Eric to count it as 1/300th an engagement ring? Are there any substitutions for sandwichmaking? What’s the sandwich-to-blowjob conversion rate (my boss suggested that 1 BJ is worth 2 4-or-more-ingredient sandwiches; I’m inclined to agree)?

 

http://jezebel.com/lady-earns-engagement-ring-by-making-300-sad-sandwiches-1383822830

 

 

Where on earth does the stereotype of feminists as sulky, sour, bitter, loveless bitches come from? It’s such a mystery. There is just so much love and affection in that quote, isn’t there?

 

Let’s look at some of the comments. They’re so cute!

 

cassiebearRAWRU

Deli sandwiches don’t have love?

Why the fuck would I want love in my sandwich? That just takes up room that could be used for sliced jalapeños and bacon. Yesterday 12:46pm

 

Straight up denial. Food is not love.

 

 

quashitlikeitshot

Exactly. I am a great cook, and my husband loves my cooking. He has never, ever, once made me feel bad for not cooking. There is a difference.

This guy is an ass, and he can certainly kiss mine. Yesterday 1:02pm

 

Point right over the head. He never made her feel bad. On the contrary. He told her that the love she put into making to sandwiches was NOT going unnoticed, and that he was prepared to love her forever.

 

 

Wenchette

This morning I made a piping hot cup of disappointment for my husband. Rich black disappointment, tinged with regret and a sense of impending loss, served piping hot with two sugars and some cream. Yesterday 12:47pm

 

This is funny in the way that watching socially impaired people try to interact is funny. You feel awful at the same time. Schadenfreude. That’s what the word really means. You laugh at someone’s misfortune, but at the same time you feel absolutely terrible for them. The second part has to be there in order for the word schadenfreude to be the correct choice. Laughing at someone’s misfortune is just sadism.

 

Trust me. My father speaks German as a first language and it always drives him nuts when people confuse sadism with schadenfreude.

 

This comment made me laugh, but at the same time, holy fuck, what a bitch! I feel sorry for her and her husband.

 

One commenter acknowledges that buddy in question is no slouch in the kitchen, but it has no effect on the Jezzie ladies.

 

see you in rach-hell

I guess I’m the only person who has read her blog and realizes that their relationship seems fine, he cooks an equal amount for the both of them, and it’s not really as serious crazy-woman-desperate-to-get-married-to-a-misogynist as this article makes it sound.

Some might say the idea is sexist. “A woman in the kitchen—how Stepford Wife of you!” a friend argued. I say come over for dinner, and watch E whip up roasted duck breast with a balsamic and currant sauce with a roasted parsnip puree and shaved pickled beets in no time, and you’ll see who spends more time in the kitchen.

Some say I’m just desperate to get engaged. Hardly. I don’t have to be. E didn’t say “cook me 300 sandwiches or I’m leaving you!” He gave me a challenge—a dare, to some degree—and the type-A, Tracy Flick side of me can’t stand being challenged. I will prove to him and the rest of the world I can make the 300 sandwiches.

 

Seems hyperbolic to me. Yesterday 1:22pm

 

Nope. That kind of reasonableness won’t play here.

 

InterrobangUsee you in rach-hell391L

Her premise is revolting. That her husband cooks changes nothing about the fact that her blog is about making enough sandwiches to “earn” an engagement ring.

 

Or, you know, maybe that demonstrating the willingness to care and make an effort to provide for the other person is mutual? Seems like Stephanie has the better deal here, with Eric pureeing parsnips to go with roast duck.

 

Seriously, these women just can’t STAND the idea that any woman would demonstrate love by providing food for a MAN even though he obviously takes the time to provide food for her.

 

That is what brings me back to Captain Capitalism’s theory. Women who embrace feminism don’t seem to be able to perceive that they are encouraged to blame men for all their problems and actively hate men, and simply REFUSE to make a fucking sandwich because severe cognitive dissonance kicks in and it is impossible to reconcile all the contradictions of feminism as a philosophy.

 

“We don’t hate men” claim the feminists.

 

But make them a sandwich? Oh hell no. That will be interpreted as love and we love men so we can’t do anything that shows we love men.

 

 

Remember my advice on how to pick a wife? I mentioned providing food as being a critical condition, and I am now inclined to believe it may be the ONLY flag you need to look for.

 

http://judgybitch.com/2012/11/16/how-to-pick-a-wife-advice-for-single-men/

 

Food = love.

 

A woman who doesn’t provide food for you doesn’t love you. She doesn’t have to be Julia Child. Anyone can make a sandwich. Anyone can order pizza. Anyone can fry bacon.

 

“Make me a sandwich?”

 

It really means “do you love me”?

 

I’d listen to the answer very carefully. A woman who refuses is likely very much a feminist, even if she won’t use the word to describe herself.

 

And that’s not a woman you want.

 

Lots of love,

 

JB

 

 

 

 

So what ARE the best jobs for women, then?

It’s kind of funny to see how confused the crew over at Jezebel is in response to this very strange article by Erin Gloria Ryan.  Erin argues that women should NOT go to business school because it will delay their reproductive plans, will offer no real economic value and besides, business schools are filled with douchey frat boys who are all majoring in how to be a dick.

Spending time when you could be having babies… um, not having babies puts you years behind your peers who stayed in the workforce.

A Vanderbilt study found that mothers who graduate from élite institutions are more likely to opt out than graduates of less selective ones, particularly when those women have M.B.A.s. Another Harvard study found that among Harvard college graduates with professional degrees, women with M.B.A.s have the lowest labor force participation rates.

If anything, when a young woman considering a Harvard M.B.A. looks at the choices of her predecessors, she should be even more skeptical of the value of the degree.

http://jezebel.com/how-to-talk-your-girl-friends-out-of-going-to-business-1335667292

I think is my favorite comment:

PietachokUvanillabean48101L

I second the opinion that this [article] is disgusting. If it was intended to be satire, the effect has been lost in the offensive down-talking…and the lack of humor. You can say a lot of this same stuff about any graduate education, but where would we be if every woman listened to this instead of her goals & interests.

Indeed, VanillaBean.  Where would we be?

Why, we might be in the sort of society that recognizes that women’s ambitions and skills tend to differ from men’s, and that we are doing a piss-poor job as a culture in talking to women honestly about what their true “goals and interests” are likely to be.

What Erin hit on, almost certainly inadvertently although maybe not, is that women with advanced business degrees find that those degrees give them an opportunity to dodge a bullet they didn’t know was coming:  they can choose to be full-time mothers, and most of them do exactly that.

Why does an advanced business degree give women that choice?

Because the degree puts them in contact with high-income men, or men with the potential to earn a high income.  Grad school is an excellent place to earn an MRS, and the kinds of jobs women with newly minted MBAs get lands them in a large pool of high-income men aka “investment banks”.

Win-win, right?

Not really, because the fact that women with business degrees find themselves actually having a choice when it comes to deciding how to raise their families comes down to LUCK.  The vast majority of women in business school probably think they’re going to kick-start some kind of awesome “career”, but when the first little bundle arrives, they realize cubicles SUCK and home is where they really want to be.

http://workplaceflexibility.org/images/uploads/program_papers/goldin_-_the_career_cost_of_family.pdf

We are doing such an enormous disservice to men and women alike when we teach women their “goals and interests” should be the primary motivating factor in deciding what to study at college, and then following that up with some giant lies about what those goals and interests will be.

http://judgybitch.com/2013/09/06/where-feminism-went-wrong-oh-i-dont-know-maybe-with-that-whole-men-suck-and-lets-tell-young-women-a-giant-pack-of-lies-strategy-just-a-thought/

So let’s talk specifics.  Let’s begin with the assumption that almost all women will want to be out of the workforce when they have young children at home.

What kinds of jobs make sense for women who plan on taking a huge chunk of time off?  Obviously, the jobs dominated by men are off the table, because we NEED those jobs to be done or society as we know it simply collapses.

When women enter male dominated professions, two things tend to happen:  the wages that normally accompany those professions begin to decline, and we end up needing MORE workers in that occupational category.

Why? Because women don’t work as many hours as men.

Medicine is great example of that.  Women now make up half the nation’s medical students, but once the ladies do the math, their ambitions take a sharp turn.  Four years of pre-med is usually complete around 22 years of age.  Another four years of med school takes them to 26 years of age.  Add two years of residency on top of that just to qualify as a GP and the lady doctors are suddenly seeing the wall looming directly in front of them.  Another four to eight years to qualify as a specialist, and most of them can kiss husbands, kids and families goodbye.

Instead, they quit at the GP level, and then argue for fewer hours, so they can spend more time with their children.  It takes two women GPs to cover the patient base of one man.  Obviously, wages decline for each individual doctor.

It’s been proven repeatedly—female doctors “will not work the same hours or have the same lifespan of contributions to the medical system as males”

http://www.macleans.ca/science/health/article.jsp?content=20080102_122329_6200

Women physicians make less than male physicians because women traditionally choose lower-paying jobs in primary care fields or they choose to work fewer hours.

Even when women ARE specialists, they still make less money than men.  Because sexism?  Nope.  Because they accept lower wages in exchange for time.

…female doctors were taking less pay in exchange for regular schedules or other family-friendly benefits

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/us-doctors-pay-gap-idUSTRE71215F20110203

It’s not really a problem until you consider the enormous expense of training doctors, and then combine that with needing to train twice as many women doctors to replace retiring male physicians.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10101276/Female-doctors-who-work-part-time-after-having-children-put-NHS-under-strain.html

As long as women understand that they WILL and SHOULD make less money than their male counterparts, owing to the fact that their hearts will always be more firmly in the kitchen than the operating room, I have no problem with women as doctors.

In fact, I think it’s a pretty sensible choice, because it gives women an unassailable credential that they can use to transition back to the workforce when and how they like.

Credentials.  That is what women should be striving for.  Something, that once you have, you have for good.  Credentials are what give women choices.

The single most sensible credential I think any woman can pursue is an accounting designation.  An accounting designation (CA, CMA, CGA, CPA) gives women enormous career flexibility, and requires only a minimum amount of maintenance to remain in effect. Accountants work in every industry, from 80-hour-a week-big-name accounting firms to hang-out-a-shingle and do the books for the local cornerstore.

You work when you want to work, and you can ramp up when you have finished the business of raising a family.

Accounting and medicine are not the only occupations with credentials.  There are lots of them.  Go to beauty school and become a hairdresser, by all means.  You can cut hair and do foil highlights in your kitchen while the kids are little and work for the big salon when they hit grade school.  Some credentials you don’t even need to go to school to earn.  C++ or Java programming languages can be learned on-line.  For FREE.

http://abstrusegoose.com/249

Do some recreational programming or work for a charity part time while the kids are little to keep your skills up to date and then consider full-time employment later on.

The point is that women should PLAN to be out of the workforce while their children are little.  If that doesn’t happen, well, fine.  But at least you have a choice.

Of course, Operation Raise Your Own Children requires one tiny little upgrade:  women will need to financially rely on a man.  Preferably a husband.  Who is preferably actually the father of the children she is at home raising.

And here is where we run into a massive, massive problem.

Women have been taught to hate and fear men and to never rely on them for anything.  Which would be funny if it weren’t so blindingly, enragingly stupid.  Our whole fucking society relies on men.  Water, power, communications, protection, transportation – they are all designed, implemented, operated, maintained and repaired by men, and since the lights continue to go on and shelves in the grocery store continue to be stocked, it looks like men can indeed be relied upon.

http://judgybitch.com/2013/09/17/what-would-happen-if-no-men-showed-up-for-work-today/

Last night, after following the commentary on yesterday’s article, my husband and I were discussing MGOTW.  Men who are simply opting out of marriage and family altogether, which as Goober points out has benefits for individual men, but is completely ruinous for society.

My husband came up with a good analogy, I think.

Let’s say you’re a black man or woman, and your whole life, all you have dreamed about is becoming a doctor.  You dream of saving other people’s lives.  It’s not just a “want”, it’s a calling.  A force within you that cannot be ignored.

But there’s a hitch.

At any time, any one of your white patients can legally enslave you.  Just apply for personal ownership, and boom, you’re a slave now.

Would you still be a doctor?

I figure that’s what MGTOW boils down to, and the men are saying “hell no, not a fucking chance”.

It’s easy to say “the laws have to change”, and I’ve trotted out that little truism myself.  But what laws?  And how should they change?  We can make divorce harder, but will that stop women from divorcing?  We can make custody agreements more fair, but will that stop women from destroying their families? We can outlaw alimony and enforce a more fair division of assets, but will that stop women from dividing up the assets?

Not likely.

Women have always had one power that men will never have:  the power to give birth to new life.

I think that’s where the solution will need to originate.  Some mechanism to mitigate against that power.  The idea of robo-wombs makes me ill, quite frankly, because it’s all too easy to imagine a nightmarish Matrix scenario of rows and rows of human beings coming into existence without the profound human connection pregnancy entails.

But reliable, reversible male birth control.  That could be a very real solution.  No woman can become pregnant without the explicit permission of the man she wishes to father her child.  Pre-gestational agreements determining who gets custody of the child in the event of relationship breakdown could be an amazing bargaining chip.  The role of the law would simply be enforcing those agreements.

If we wrest the power to control the creation of life from women’s hands, and make certain that power is shared, we may have a solution to men’s unwillingness to be enslaved at the whim of women.

Let all the divorce and custody and division of assets laws stand as they are.  Pre-nuptial agreements, when carried out properly, can circumvent all those laws.  Pre-gestational agreements can do the same.  Women who wait until the last minute to get pregnant will be making themselves more amenable to fair agreements, and any woman who knows she will lose custody of her children should she decide to trade in for Husband 2.0 because 1.0 just isn’t doing it for her anymore will have cause to reconsider.

If co-habiting couples can agree on who gets the IKEA couch when they break up, before they have even moved in together, why not have agreements about who keeps the house and the kids BEFORE the kids are even conceived?

http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/up_with_the_pre_prenup/

Well, this post took a detour from my original intention, which was to spell out for women how to plan their lives assuming they WILL take time off from work, but it all makes sense at the end of the day.  Women can’t make any plans of the sort without a man to rely on, and men have approximately zero incentive to financially support a woman for years upon years when the result can be utterly ruinous for him.

Male birth control.

That’s where we should be throwing our healthcare dollars.  The ramifications could be life-altering, for all of us.

Sadly, BigPharma isn’t interested in the most promising avenues of research, because BigPharma makes a lot of money selling pills to women every month.

http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home/

Perhaps BigPharma is being a little short-sighted, though.  Once men understand just what kind of power a reliable, reversible method of birth control gives them, you might see every last fertile man in the nation lined up for a dose.

And that’s a lot of customers.

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.

Michael LeBoeuf

Women better be brushing up on their own strategy, not only in terms of their jobs, but in terms of negotiating how that baby is going to arrive.  There won’t be any “oopsie I forgot to take my pill” bullshit once we have true equality in birth control.

 

Equality.  That’s the goal, isn’t it?

 

Lots of love,

JB